What surgical margin is acceptable for DCIS?  

This is a great question. The question references the "Society of Surgical Oncology-American Society for Radiation Oncology consensus guideline on margins for breast-conserving surgery with whole-breast irradiation in stages I and II invasive breast cancer". I believe these guidelines were excplicit...

In my answer from February, I alluded to the impending publication of a consensus guideline on margins for DCIS. The wait is over! In a recent issue of the JCO, Monica Morrow and colleagues have laid out a thorough and evidence-based recommendation. Fortunately, it is not shocking -- we have been on...

An old study from Tufts reviewed its experience with radiotherapy dose escalation in women with close or involved surgical margins and did not verify that radiotherapy "makes up" for a positive surgical margin. Barbara Fowble's numerous ASTRO presentations from the 1990s also reviews her experience ...

DCIS recurrence rates always seem a little higher than invasive cancer recurrence rates when you look at individual series.  So much depends on pathological handling of the specimen and I've noted a great variation when I cover different hospitals.  General pathologists are not the same as...

I like the comments above. So much goes into margin assessment.  I would beware extensive intraductal component and multiple close margins.  However, how to manage this?  Reexcision or boost?  These decisions warrant a surgical opinion as to where the margin was (posterior or an...

My question here is "why do we always seem to treat DCIS as being worse than invasive?". If "no ink on tumor" is good for invasive, it really would seem that it should be good enough for DCIS.  I can recall during the early days of lumpectomy, patients with DCIS had to have a mastectomy, becau...